Junker (Prussia)
Before World War II, the dividing line was often drawn at the river Elbe which was also roughly the western boundary of Slavic settlement by the Wends in the so-called Germania Slavica prior to Ostsiedlung.
Martin Luther's disguise as "Junker Jörg" at the Wartburg; he would later mock King Henry VIII of England as "Juncker Heintz"[5]).
A good number of poorer Junkers took up careers as soldiers (Fahnenjunker), mercenaries, and officials (Hofjunker, Kammerjunker) at the court of territorial princes.
Being the bulwark of the ruling House of Hohenzollern, the Junkers controlled the Prussian Army, leading in political influence and social status, and owning immense estates worked by tenants.
[8] During World War I, Irish nationalist MP Tom Kettle compared the Anglo-Irish landlord class to the Prussian Junkers, saying, "England goes to fight for liberty in Europe and for junkerdom in Ireland.
[12] Through the controlling of politics behind a veil, Junkers were able to influence politicians to create a law that prohibited collecting of debts from agrarians, thus pocketing even more money and strengthening their power.
The term was also applied to Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, lord of Neudeck in West Prussia, and to the "camarilla" around him urging the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, personified by men like Hindenburg's son Oskar and his West Prussian "neighbour" Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau, who played a vital role in the Osthilfe scandal of 1932/33.
During the advance of the Red Army in the closing months of the war and subsequently, most Junkers had to flee from the eastern territories that were turned over to the re-established Republic of Poland with the implementation of the Oder–Neisse line according to the Potsdam Agreement.
After World War II, during the communist Bodenreform (land reform) of September 1945 in the Soviet Occupation Zone, later East Germany, all private property exceeding an area of 100 hectares (250 acres) was expropriated, and then predominantly allocated to 'New Farmers' on condition that they continued farming them.
As most of these large estates, especially in Brandenburg and Western Pomerania, had belonged to Junkers, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany promoted their plans with East German President Wilhelm Pieck's slogan Junkerland in Bauernhand!
[17] The former owners were accused of war crimes and involvement in the Nazi regime by the Soviet Military Administration and the SED, with many of them being arrested, brutally beaten and interned in NKVD special camps (Speziallager), while their property was plundered and the manor houses demolished.
[18] From 1952 these individual farms were pressured by a variety of means to join together as collectives and incorporated into Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften ("agricultural production comradeships", LPG) or nationalised as Volkseigene Güter ("publicly owned estates", VEG).
[citation needed] After German reunification, some Junkers tried to regain their former estates through civil lawsuits, but the German courts have upheld the land reforms and rebuffed claims to full compensation, confirming the legal validity of the terms within the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (Two Plus Four Agreement) (and incorporated into the Basic Law of the Federal Republic), by which expropriations of land under Soviet occupation were irreversible.
Other families, however, have quietly purchased or leased back their ancestral homes from the current owners[19] (often the German federal government in its role as trustee).
